That Was TODAY?
by GlitterFrog
Summary: It's a slow day for the Pumpkin King. But has he forgotten something rather pressing? Oh crud!


A/N: This came from a day some time ago when I was waiting for my best friend to come over and she was running late. My mom suggested that I pretend she wasn't coming; that way it would be a pleasant surprise when she actually did show up. I thought about what would happen if Jack tried that, and this oneshot was born. Hope you enjoy! Here's…

That Was _Today?_

A JackxSally

Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, sat in his PeeWee's Big Adventure boxers eating Cheez Whiz out of the can. His faithful ghost dog Zero lay sprawled out in his basket in such a position that he looked like he'd either been thrown there at high speed or hit by a semi truck. Jack wasn't wearing a shirt, since it was a hot day. He had yet to brush his teeth, since toothpaste and Cheez Whiz didn't mix harmoniously. His entire house resembled the inside of a long-neglected closet in dire need of a spring cleaning. Zero snored teeny snores, lost in dreams. It was a humid, lazy day where napping topped everyone's to-do list. There was nothing to do but sit in one's underwear, eat products that could loosely be called food, and wait for the ominous clouds to shed their burdens… _Brrrrinng…_ "**Aaaaaaaahhhhh!****"**

The screaming doorbell! What-who? Jack poked his head out the window. His sockets flew wide open, and he nearly sprayed fake cheese all over the windowsill. Sally stood on his unwelcome mat, red hair flashing in the increasingly limited sunlight. She looked very nice, and she'd brought her fancy handbag. Realization smacked Jack in the sternum. They had a date today! He'd gotten so lonely this morning while waiting for Dr. Finklestein to release Sally from her chores that he'd decided to pretend that she wasn't coming. That way, the king of Halloween had reasoned at the time, he'd be pleasantly surprised when she did come, and the waiting would be less of a drag. Now here he was, sitting in his underwear, with Cheez Whiz breath, in a house that could have been featured on one of those horrific reality shows about humans with compulsive hoarding disorders.

Zero looked just as alarmed as his master. Jack gulped down the two cheekfuls of cheese paste and jumped away from his desk. "Just a minute!" he shouted down to Sally, trying with precious little success to keep the ever-growing panic out of his voice. "Okay!" she shouted back. Jack scrambled to his closet and yanked on the first shirt that he could find. "Zero!" he demanded, voice muffled by fabric, "Start cleaning up, boy! I'll be down there as soon as I can!" "Wuff!" Zero yipped an affirmative and darted downstairs. Since the ghost dog's idea of cleaning meant hiding the offending mess(including trash)under the couch and chair cushions, straightening up the living room took him almost no time at all. Meanwhile, Jack tore apart his closet.

"Pants," he hollered, "Where are my pants?" "What?" Sally called. "Nothing!" he yelled, blushing. Jack tore apart his dirty laundry bin. Shirt…shirt…Edward Scissorhands hoodie…socks…one of Zero's toys that he'd hidden there during a game and forgotten about…crud! Not a single pair of pants to be found! Then Jack remembered: they were in the dryer. He'd decided last night to put away and fold them later. The Pumpkin King sprinted downstairs, tripped over a scientific tome that he had yet to return to the doctor, and tumbled headlong down the remaining steps. Sally listened to the crescendoing series of hard thunks and winced at the enormous crash that signaled the finale. Zero started barking furiously. The pretty ragdoll could hear several smaller crunches and the tinkle of glass.

"Are you okay, Jack?" she asked, not entirely sure if she wanted to know what had just transpired. "Just dandy!" came his harried reply, "Just another minute!" The patchwork redhead adjusted the position of her purse strap on her shoulder.

She'd been waiting for several minutes already, and the gray clouds overhead were only getting more ominous. As the first few raindrops began pattering against the windows, Jack attempted to hop into his pants with both legs. Failing at that, he jammed one leg in- and snagged his toe in a hole in his left pocket. Cursing under his breath, the lanky skeleton hopped in an elaborate dance as he tried to extricate the one leg so he could clothe the other. Zero zipped out of the living room with a satisfied bark, indicating that he'd finished tidying up the house.

"Good boy! Very good boy!" Jack grunted, shortly before he ripped the pocket clean out of his pants and tumbled down in a jumble of clicking bones. His arm came down hard on the counter that he'd been using to steady himself, and the structure's nails tore clean out of the wall. "GAAAAAH!" Jack futilely struggled to shield his face and skull as jars of peanuts, eyeballs, knickknacks, and jelly beans hurtled to their untimely and inevitable doom. The master of fright wriggled into his pants, swept jelly beans and broken glass off his shirt, and slid on the eyeballs just as he had nearly gained his feet. He scrabbled across the entire kitchen in a slick of preservative gook, leaving frantic scratches along the cupboards and morbid-looking smears across the tile floor.

His skid was abruptly arrested by the pots and pans cabinet, which popped open and disgorged the entirety of its contents into his lap in a symphony of dissonant decibels. Jack stuffed the cookware back into the cabinet as Zero nosed the mop across the floor. "Good idea, boy!" the king of Halloween gasped. He hauled himself to his feet, grabbed and filled a bucket, and swabbed the tile as if his afterlife depended on it…. *****

The door squeaked in protest as Jack threw it open. Sally sat squinting in the light flooding from the doorway. Her knees were drawn up to her chin. Her hair was sopping wet. The rain had drenched her despite her best attempts to crawl as far under the roof as she could. Jack offered her a hand up, which the gentle ragdoll took. He held both her tiny hands once he'd pulled her into the house and shut the door with his foot. "Sally, I'm so sorry," he gushed. She squeezed his fingerbones. "It's alright, Jack. I'm fine." "No, it really was inexcusable of me," Jack fretted, "Is there anything I can-?" "Shhh." She touched a finger to his frantically working mouth. He shooshed.

"Can you go get a couple of towels, please?" she asked. Jack nodded, and jogged off to go get them. After she'd wrung a jaw-dropping volume of rainwater out of her hair and into the sink, Sally limped to the couch. She flomped down onto one of the cushions- and simultaneously heard and felt a _squish._ Jack came out just as she discovered the family of tomatoes that Zero had seen fit to place under said cushion. If the Pumpkin King could have blushed, he would have been the shade of an artificially flavored lollipop. Sally took the towels from him. "Let's clean up before we go out," she suggested. Jack bared his pointed teeth in a sheepish grin. "Okay."

Once Sally had gotten dried off and sent her dress to the dryer, she and Jack started cleaning. Both wore a pair of Jack's trademark stick-thin pants and a crisp white undershirt.(It was fortunate that Sally didn't need to breathe) "You could have come in once it started raining," Jack worried. The smart experiment ducked her head bashfully, and he wondered if she would have. She had only now gotten the courage to text him first and join in on his soulful songs, after all. "Don't worry about it, Jack," she insisted, worrying at a suture on her wrist. "But I should have treated you better," the skeleton king insisted. Sally squeezed his hand. "Jack- everyone forgets." "Who says I _forgot _that you were coming over?" he objected. They laughed together.

Sally's dress was finished just in time for them to catch the evening's last showing of World War Z at the local theater. Before the evening was over, the two had made plans to meet the following Wednesday…and this time, Jack wrote it down in his planner.


End file.
